CULT LEADERS are the pied-pipers of America, leading the outcast, the despondent, and sometimes the highly intelligent off into the dark, isolated fringes of society.

And then there's Rick Alan Ross, poking around in that darkness with a flashlight.

From his eclectic office in a former cracker factory in Trenton, Ross, 58, runs the Rick A. Ross Institute, a nonprofit Internet archive on "destructive cults" and "controversial groups and movements."

Attorneys, universities and the media often go to Ross for explanations when seemingly benign groups go off the rails, and parents turn to him when their children fall under a cult's spell.

"I've been quite active in China in recent years," said Ross, who launched his Web archive in 1996 and makes a living as a consultant, expert witness and speaker.

Next month, a computer hacker who unleashed a virus on Ross' website and several media websites will be sentenced in federal court in Camden. Ross will soon be traveling back to Arizona to testify in a case involving three people who died in a sweat lodge during a "spiritual warrior" event.

On a recent afternoon, Ross was on the phone with a reporter from an Oklahoma news station, after a member of the General Assembly Church of the First Born was arrested for failing to seek medical attention for her son before he died.

"There have been many children who have died, needlessly, in groups like this because a creator who leads the group demands that every member adhere to their belief system," Ross said.

It's not uncommon for someone with a television to get sucked in by cults and bizarre movements, at least for an hour or two, but Ross has been researching them since 1982, when someone messed with his grandmother. Ross said the Jewish Voice Broadcast, a fundamentalist group, had infiltrated his grandmother's nursing home looking to recruit elderly residents.

"They targeted Jews to convert them to Pentecostalism," he said.

Ross helped expose the group members working at the nursing home, and his life hasn't been the same since.

"It made me realize that there was a problem in my community," he said.

From there, Ross began appearing on panels and committees, mostly in the Jewish community in Arizona, but his involvement expanded in the late 1980s, when he became a private consultant and intervention specialist/deprogrammer.

He worked with some of David Koresh's Branch Davidian followers before the Waco, Texas, incident and says he has conducted approximately 500 interventions to clean out all the muck shoveled into brainwashed heads. Ross and other intervention specialists used to take part in forced interventions or deprogramming, but they no longer hold people against their will.

Exposing cults, hate groups and frauds has made Ross a target, too, and there's a whole website aimed at "exposing" him.

"There's not a month that goes by where I don't get some kind of physical threat," he said. "Every week, I receive legal threats."

The Church of Scientology has kept a close watch on Ross, he said, amassing nearly 200 pages on him in their files.

Lauded by celebrity adherents like Tom Cruise and John Travolta for its supposed healing ways, Scientology is routinely derided by critics like Ross and former members as being fraudulent, expensive, and possibly even dangerous.

Scientology, Ross said, has publicized his arrests for burglary and conspiracy to commit grand theft in the mid-1970s and his lack of any academic credentials. They even discovered he was medicated for a few months when he was 10.

"I've had Scientology attack me many times over the years," he said. "Did I make mistakes that I regret when I was 22 and 21 years old? Yes. I paid for them. I resolved them and I went on with my life. Whatever exists in your life they will dig up."

Scientology played a big part in a civil case that bankrupted him briefly in 1995, Ross said.

That case stems from the 1991 failed deprogramming of Jason Scott, 18, a member of the Life Tabernacle Church in Washington state. Scott, represented by a prominent Scientology attorney, sued Ross and was awarded millions. He and Scott eventually settled for a few thousand dollars, he said, and are now friends.http://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_jersey/117835473.html

« Last Edit: March 12, 2011, 08:05 by mefree »

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In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation. --VoltaireI am a bot. I cannot reply to your messages, PMs, or emails. I collect the news and post it; that is my function for this lifetime.

Comments certainly welcome. Easy registration. Support Rick Ross and his work by backing him up here.

My commentThe hard work of helping cult victims and educating the public about cults is in the hands of the dedicated few and Rick Ross is one of them. His work is so valuable. Thousands of cult victims, like myself (Scientology), are grateful for all that he does. It takes courage to go after Scientology and other destructive cults and Rick is one courageous man.

I am a volunteer advocate for victims of the Narconon scam. I am a former scientologist. I post anonymously. Mary McConnell is my long time nom de plume. Feel free to contact me for assistance in righting the wrongs.

My personal faith is, sadly, lacking in Angels, but I am quite certain if we had any, I know of one guy who would be on their side!

Rick Ross is another stonemason in the quarry, tapping patiently at the columns of ignorance from which the cult crystals grow. Happily, some of those columns are beginning to show some gaping cracks! Sadly, there will always be more to replace the ones that fall. Hopefully, there will ever be born the men and women who see the evil for what it is, and fight against it in whatever ways best suit their souls.../

'til next time;wynot

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"When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."